5 posts tagged “automotive”
When you’ve worked hard to set up your dealership blog -- or paid good money to have someone set it up for you -- itcan be frustrating when you think that nobody’s reading.
Even though it’s a relatively new technology, automotive marketing shares the same traits with all other forms of copywriting. You have to give people a good reason to read what you’re writing. The best way to get people to read is to give them a great headline.
Headlines are important for two reasons. You wan t to entice real people to read your posts, but you also want your posts to show up well in search engines so that they can find you in the first place. Here’s what you need to know about headlining for your automotive blog marketing campaign.
Search engines require relevance.
Search engines like Google display entries in their results in order of relevance to the original search term. When someone types in a specific make and model of vehicle, the search engine provides the best matches for their search terms, and the words in your headline some of the most important ones they analyze.
Make sure you’re incorporating what people might be searching for. Think about what information your blog post is providing, and title your articles using words that people would type if they were looking for that information. If they’re looking for ‘used car deals in Denver’, don’t title your post with ‘New Pricing’ because that won’t tell the search engines what they need to know.
Human beings require human interest.
Knowing that search engines rank certain pages well because they contain highly relevant keywords, many first time webmasters try to stuff those words in their headlines just to get high placement. What gets forgotten is that high placement does not guarantee a click. If your title is boring people won’t click on it no matter how high on the page you are.
The way to capture reader attention is to highlight what they will benefit from reading the article. Be as interesting as you can without being boring. To use the previous example, ‘used car deals in Denver’ might get you high search engine placement but it’s not particularly enticing to real people. ‘Used Car Deals in Denver: Best prices in the state’ or ‘How to Find Used Car Deals in Denver’ show readers what they’ll get out of reading your article. Telling them how they’ll be helped almost guarantees a click.
You’ve been hearing it everywhere -- automotive blog marketing is one of the best and simplest ways to improve your search engine rankings without paying a fortune for the privilege. Once you’ve decided to go ahead with it, though, the big question still remains. Who’s going to write this stuff?
There are two main ways to get content onto your automotive dealership blog. You can have someone do it in-house -- either you or someone else who works for you -- or you can hire it out to someone else. There are pros and cons to each option. Here are some things to think about to help you make your decision.
Do you have enough to say?
If you’re doing the writing yourself, you’re going to need to find a lot of stuff to write about. A blog isn’t much of a blog if it’s only updated every couple of months, and you won’t reap many blog benefits if you don’t post often. If you or someone in your dealership can be counted on to consistently have something to say on relevant topics, you might want to write the blogs in-house and give it a really personal touch.
Can you write well?
If the only time you pick up a pen is to sign pay checks, writing a blog might not be for you. If you have good spelling and grammar skills, you’ll probably find blogging easy.
There are two things to think about on this issue. If you don’t write well, you can either hire an editor or you can publish as is and take the risk. Editors often cost more than writers, so you might end up spending more money and time to have someone else fix your writing. If you publish as is, you risk looking unprofessional. But if you’re confident in your ability to get good words on the screen, doing it yourself is a great way to go.
Do you have the time to write a blog?
Perhaps the most important consideration when it comes to automotive internet marketing is time. Marketing initiatives are resource intensive -- sometimes the resource is money and sometimes the resource is time. There aren’t many ways to market your car dealership that are free and fast.
If you have the time to devote to this project or you can delegate it to someone else who does, writing your blog yourself can be a great idea. If you know that this will be just one more project on your ever-expanding to do list, you might be better off paying for the content.
It’s estimated that there are over 200 million blogs floating around on the internet. Do you ever wonder how yours stands up to the rest?
There’s a lot involved in automotive blog marketing. Just getting content up and making sure it’s optimized for search engine traffic is hard enough. But how your blog looks and feels is just as important in making sure your readers come back after their first visit.
Do you allow for comments?
One of the key differences between a blog and a static website is that blogs allow your readers the chance to contribute to the conversation. Many people love reading blogs because they’re not an authoritarian media -- it’s not just you writing and them reading. But many blog owners turn off the comment capacity on their blogs, often fearing spam.
Always allow for comments, even when nobody’s reading your blog yet. Give people the chance to contribute. They may join in and they may not, but they certainly won’t if you don’t let them.
Do you have a contact form?
Even if users can comment, some will prefer to get in touch with you privately. Is your contact form or email information easy to find and use? Do you require too much information from users when they’re filling out the form or can they simply leave their email address? Making yourself easy to find is crucial in this interconnected world.
Can your readers navigate by category and by date?
When a new visitor likes what they see, the odds are pretty good that they’ll want to see more. Depending on what they’re looking for they’ll want to navigate in different ways. If you’re discussing local events or issues that are time sensitive, it makes sense to navigate by date and you’ll want to have your archives searchable by month of publication. If they’re particularly interested in a certain topic -- trucks, for example, or maintenance issues -- they don’t want to have to search through every post you’ve ever written to find relevant posts. It makes sense in that case to allow them to search by category.
Is it easy on the eyes?
In many cases, blogs that look great the first time you look at them on the designer’s mockup don’t look great with lines and lines of text. The human eye can only handle so much information at once, so make sure your text is broken up with lots of white space. And speaking of white space -- it’s supposed to be white, or at least very white. Light text on a dark backround is hard to read for an extended period, and readers will click away instead of squinting.
Luckily, most of these issues require only a few clicks to change so if you need to make some fixes, it shouldn’t take too long. With a few simple tweaks to your automotive brand marketing strategy you can end up with readers staying longer -- and coming back for more.
Remember five years ago, way back in the Internet dark ages, when the first question anybody asked you about your online brand marketing strategy was, “Do you have a website?”
This time last year, the question was “Do you have a blog?” This year, the question is different once again. Now the question on everybody’s lips is, “What’s your blog address?”
It’s no longer nice to have a blog, it’s assumed. You could almost go so far as to say it’s mandatory. Everybody has one, and web designers are rushing to keep up with the demand from people in every business wanting a shiny new blog for their not so new website. Auto dealers are no exception.
If your auto dealership isn’t already blogging, you’re probably wondering what all of the fuss is about. Why do you need a blog? Aren’t they just online diaries? Not anymore.
1. Blogs increase your auto dealership’s search engine standings.
When you create a static website, search engines crawl through the internet and find your blog once. They investigate the content, find out what your website’s all about, and they leave. If you don’t change anything, they don’t come back and update their information -- there’s nothing to update.
With a blog, your content is dynamic and changing. You’re adding new information constantly, creating a growing inventory of searchable terms, and giving search engine crawlers to come back for. Weekly or even daily you’re filling your website with rich information and increasing the value of the site, making it more and more likely that search engines will list you favorably among their top results.
2. Blogs help your auto dealership build a thriving community.
Imagine having an entire community of people lined up to hear your message. They come to you and answer your questions or help other readers with theirs. They take time out of their day to come and hang out on your website.
That’s what blogging can give you. With syndication services and email signups, a limitless number of potential customers will hear everything you want them to hear -- voluntarily. Your comment section will enable them to communicate directly with you and with other readers and buyers. You don’t just get customers -- you get loyal fans.
3. Blogs can give your auto dealership trusted expert status.
Traditionally, people considered blogs to be glorified diaries. While some people still use them for this purpose, the majority of blogs are topical and often business related. Your blog can be your forum for dispensing valuable advice on the car buying or car ownership experience. You can give advice on how to maintain the resale value of your vehicle, how to keep the new car smell, even how often someone should go between oil changes.
Imagine your potential customers having a question and instead of asking their neighbor, they come to your website. That’s what blogging can give you.
The thing that is on most dealers' minds is how they can generate more business which, for the most part equates to how they can generate more leads. More people in the showroom, more web inquiries. The Internet has really bred a mentality today that auto sales is all about lead generation. Naturally, we began devising ways for blogs to generate leads.
What we had come up with was the idea of using blog entries to display multi-media rich virtual showcases of cars in stock, but this was met with technical challenges at the RSS level which we need not get in to here. Plus, as we began to realize that using blogs to showcase vehicles and generate leads was just another way to skin the same old stray cat, we started shifting our focus towards a whole other form of marketing...online brand marketing.
Search engine brand marketing is an entirely different thought process for car dealers, but dealers have been doing offline brand marketing for decades through radio, T.V. and print advertising. If there is one thing that seems to lack in online advertising for car dealers, it is the idea of brand marketing. Considering that search engines are the ultimate playing field for online brand marketing and that blogs are equipped to provide superlative SEO, what better way is there for dealers to use blogs today?
The hidden gem for using blogs for search engine brand marketing is that the product can be made completely hands-free for car dealers. Unlike many other forms of online advertising where the dealer is required to prepare vehicles for online display, prepare them for offline display, work with ad agencies to prepare promotions for print and web, deal with software and their providers, yada yada yada, dealers aren't required to lift a finger in order to benefit from this form of blog marketing. A marketing agency with the right tools in place can produce lasting and impacting results for their dealers by saturating search markets and improving overall online visibility, including social media marketing.
